Frustrating day

12/12/05 5:15 P.M.
18 F, Cloudy, WSW wind 2 mph

Good evening,

What a frustrating day! As I went to bed last night, the ISP decided to stop working. I thought it was something in this machine, but it turned out it really wasn't. It still was off this morning when I tried to open up, then decided to do some fooling around with the settings to see if I could correct the problem without success. I had wait until itol opened their phone lines to see if they could help. THEN I found out that itol had the problem and was working on it, hoping to be back up at noon or before. They weren't! About 3:00 P.M. we finally were able to access the web, but I was not able to access email (either with Outlook or itol's website). That didn't happen until about an hour ago. Since then the email has been downloading a couple of very long emails. One at least had a lot of pictures and the other isn't in yet. Another quirk which happened, many of my short cuts disappeared and I have to redo those too.

The weekend was very tiring. We spent most of the day today very slow, not much action activities at all. For some reason, the attendance was really down at LSM this month. We did have some folks who emailed earlier that they were not coming and why, but there were more who didn't. It is very discouraging for the staff and instructors. I purchased way too much food for the weekend and a lot was eventually eaten as "snacks" during the weekend, but that really is a waste of funds that are short in the first place. Sure as shooting, if I purchase less, there will be a full house. How do you win?

I did get a chance to work on my sermon for yesterday over the weekend. That was a big help. I hid for a bit every once in a while and did a lot of walking too. I have gotten to the point I don't use and notes or read my sermon any more. It is too difficult for me. What I do is try to get a whole snag of research together and then make some kind of outline (actually filled in pretty much), reading it over and over again until most of the material more or less stays between my ears. Then it just is a matter of letting the Spirit empty out what it wants to. I found that I am the one who makes the mistakes and the Good Lord does the right parts.

Yesterday it went pretty well. The first service better than the second service. The choir sang during the second service and the director always takes a few minutes to give a temple talk before they sing. I decided I would have to cut down my sermon a bit. Also because of the large number of folks giving me prayer requests. I can't remember when we have had so many folks in the hospital for surgery or illness. Also a lot of folks dying in the area too. I bet there were over 20 folks we prayed for, besides the "normal" number we have been praying for. The portion of the sermon I cut out, was a responsive part using the Gospel lesson. Wish I hadn't though. One reason for having the responsive part, was to use the new pew Bibles we now have. Normally they just sit in the pew racks. Next time! It worked well for the first service, but at first I had the folks look at the wrong chapter. I only caught it when I realized it was not making any sense for the points I was trying to make. Oh well, I called a halt to it and started over again.

We have a new coat of snow outside. Really is pretty again. What really surprised me was how dark outside it was this morning when I got up. Usually with snow on the ground, you can see something at night. Not this morning. After I had been up an hour or so, the light on the front deck went on. I looked out the window and here was a big, fat rabbit sitting at the door into the sunporch. As soon as he saw me looking out the window, he made a bee-line back down the ramp and out of sight as soon as possible. I really had to chuckle. Yesterday morning there was a very long ripple in the snow going down the driveway in the snow. It kind of looked like someone had laid a long broom stick (somewhat bent up though) on the ground and the snow covered it. It was the result of a mouse going under the snow, causing a tunnel in the snow, raising part of it. Cool!

Time to get to some other thing.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><